Table of Contents
- NEW BOOK>
McLaughlin, Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution
- SYMPOSIUM>
Memorial Symposium for Steven Collins
NEW
BOOK> McLaughlin, Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution
by Levi McLaughlin
I’m pleased to announce that my book, Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan, published by the University of Hawai`i Press, is now for sale. Here is a description:
Soka Gakkai is Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization. It claims more than 8 million Japanese households and close to 2 million members in 192 countries and territories. The religion is best known for its affiliated political party, Komeito (the Clean Government Party), which comprises part of the ruling coalition in Japan’s National Diet, and it exerts considerable influence in education, media, finance, and other key areas.
Levi McLaughlin’s comprehensive account of Soka Gakkai draws on nearly two decades of archival research and non-member fieldwork to account for its institutional development beyond Buddhism and suggest how we should understand the activities and dispositions of its adherents. McLaughlin explores the group’s Nichiren Buddhist origins and turns to insights from religion, political science, anthropology, and cultural studies to characterize Soka Gakkai as mimetic of the nation-state. Ethnographic vignettes combine with historical evidence to demonstrate ways Soka Gakkai’s twin Buddhist and modern humanist legacies inform the organization’s mimesis of the modern Japan in which the group took shape. To make this argument, McLaughlin analyzes Gakkai sources heretofore untreated in English-language scholarship; provides a close reading of the serial novel The Human Revolution, which serves the Gakkai as both history and de facto scripture; identifies ways episodes from members’ lives form new chapters in its growing canon; and contributes to discussions of religion and gender as he chronicles the lives of members who simultaneously reaffirm generational transmission of Gakkai devotion as they pose challenges for the organization’s future.
Contents:
Chapter One: Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation
Chapter Two: From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai
Chapter Three: Soka Gakkai’s Dramatic Narrative
Chapter Four: Participating in Canon: The Formation of Sacred Texts in a New Religion
Chapter Five: Cultivating Youth: Discipleship Through Standardized Education
Chapter Six: Good Wives, Wise Mothers, and Foot Soldiers of Conversion
Afterword: Vocational Paths
The hardcover is now available at the University of Hawai`i Press site: https://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/soka-gakkais-human-revolution-the-rise-of-a-mimetic-nation-in-modern-japan/
A Kindle edition is forthcoming from Amazon in December.
Levi McLaughlin
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
North Carolina State University
SYMPOSIUM>
Memorial Symposium for Steven Collins
by David Tomlinson
Dear all, A symposium in honor of Steven Collins, "Buddhism, Thought, and Civilization: A Memorial Symposium for Steven Collins," will be held at the University of Chicago, Nov. 15th–16th 2018. Information, including the symposium's schedule, can be found here: https://voices.uchicago.edu/collinssymposium/.
Sincerely,
Davey K. Tomlinson
University of Chicago
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